Critically analysing the vital provisions of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996, Hammurabi & Solomon senior partner Shweta Bharti recommends ways to improve the application and workability of the Act to expedite alternate dispute resolution mechanisms for the increasing number of commercial disputes.

Like most Indians in the past few weeks I have been thinking about corruption, notes Sanjay Bhatia in this Legal Opinion, as the events leading to the recently concluded Commonwealth Games hogged headlines for all the wrong reasons. He argues for a solution to the problem that borrows heavily from US practice.

Majmudar & Co discusses the latest withholding tax implications for foreign entities after the landmark ruling of the Supreme Court in the case of GE India Technology that in effect overrules the Karnataka High Court’s Samsung decision and provides a reprieve from the obligatory TDS payment and deduction on foreign remittances with no India nexus.

The new 2010 Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill is a double-edged sword full of loopholes and unanswered questions that are more likely to cut the Indian public than protect it from disastrous scale nuclear disasters, argue Hammurabi & Solomon advocates Sangmitra Sawant and Vishnu Anand.

The tentacles of the "pseudo-lawyers" have driven the bar to the wall, claims advocate and partner Elizabeth Seshadri. Is a bar exam enough to cure the setting rot or do we need a test that reaches far more deeply?

Starting up a legal process outsourcing (LPO) business may be a perceived goldmine and en vogue these days but it takes more than just office, staff and website and most start-up LPOs are wasting their time, warns SDD Global Solutions' Sanjay Bhatia.

Concerned with the menacing rise of celebrity domain squatting cases, FoxMandal technology law head Salman Waris asks whether the current laws are an adequate deterrent to cyber squatting.

As lawyers in Tamil Nadu continue their fight to make Tamil the official court language through hunger strikes and the latest public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court, Madras High Court advocate and Iyer and Thomas partner H Karthik Seshadri highlights the dangers of a regional language-based divide.

Legal process outsourcing (LPO) companies have come under the spotlight after the the recent Balaji Chennai High Court writ petition and the Bombay High Court's decision in the Lawyers Collective v. Ashurst case. The cases have created significant uncertainty, argues SDD Global's Sanjay Bhatia, although for the most part it has been a false alarm for LPOs.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is expected to be implemented from 1 April 2011 but there is a long way to go before it is actually 'implemented', argue Zeus Law's senior partner and associates.

To me it appears childish to pose the query "until when can entry of foreign lawyers be prevented in India", says Bhasin & Co managing partner and Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF) chairman Lalit Bhasin in response to last week's opinion that the Lawyers Collective judgment is wrong.

The question is not whether to allow entry of foreign lawyers in India, but the question is until when can entry of foreign lawyers be prevented in India, argues Kaden Boriss Legal LLP founding partner Hemant K Batra.

A quiet but happy revolution is taking place at the Indian Bar, argues Elizabeth Seshadri. But while the lethargic acceptance of the legal system's decay is slowly being shaken off, the pace of change must increase drastically.